Tag Archives: Visual Stress

How Can Teachers Support Dyslexic Students?

Posted on by Catherine Smith
dyslexia support
03 Oct

To continue our support for the British Dyslexic Association’s (BDA) Dyslexia Awareness Week, we want to look at how teachers can help their students who are affected by the condition.  When it comes to diagnosing dyslexia, teachers can be critical to this process as they are more likely to spot early signs of dyslexia in children.

Since there are 1.2 million children in the UK who have dyslexia, it’s integral that teachers have the knowledge to support students who are affected and help them develop coping strategies, so they can reach their full potential.

Offering Dyslexia Support

Dyslexia affects each person differently, so it’s important that teachers use a range of different methods to help with each student’s performance.

dyslexic support When planning a lesson, take into account that each exercise contains instructions that are straight to the point and omits any unnecessary detail and words.  Keep to simple, clear sentences and make sure the layout is straight forward so it’s easier for the student to follow.

By inserting diagrams and images into your exercises, this makes it easier for students to understand the instructions, especially if they don’t know every word. Again, spacing out instructions and making sure the text is broken up can help relieve eye strain and increase readability.

Try and insert different background colours and fonts, which can give weight to the text and ensure that it’s visually easier for the student to digest. At iansyst, we offer a selection of products that helps relieve visual stress, such as colour overlays that aids with the student’s reading fluency and duration.

It’s also important to look out for areas where students with dyslexia thrive. Understandably, dyslexia can affect self-esteem and is sometimes thought of as being a disadvantage in the workplace and classroom, so it’s especially important to encourage their strengths. It has been observed that children with dyslexia are creative, have strong reasoning and problem solving skills and are great team players.

If you wish to learn more on how you can help your students who are affected by the condition, we have a range of assistive technology that offers dyslexia support such as our text-to-speech software such as ClaroRead and our Texthelp Read and Write.

For more information on our products, don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of our team on 01223 420101.

 

Reading Rulers

Posted on by Reece King
07 Mar

There have been huge advances in technology over the past decade, allowing for increasingly powerful assistive software to be created to help people overcome literacy difficulties. Sometimes however, the most effective tool that can be used is not complicated software, but instead something much simpler.

One example of this applies to people who suffer from Visual Stress. A condition that makes black text on a white background difficult for a person to read. The words may seem to blur out of focus, or move around on the page. Consequently reading takes much longer and requires a much higher level of concentration, often leading to tiredness and headaches. It is an ailment that affects a wide range of people, but most of the individuals that we encounter with this particular complaint suffer from it as a result of Dyslexia.

Reading rulers are a perfect example of how a simple and inexpensive product can successfully overcome a complex difficulty such as the one described above. Reading Rulers are a colored transparent ruler that is placed over text that a person is reading, changing the background colour of the white page to that of the coloured ruler. It also has the additional benefit of providing a guideline of what part of the page a person is reading. This may seem like a menial addition. But it can make a huge difference to dyslexic readers who easily find themselves losing track of where they are on the page.

There is a range of products that allow the same process to happen whilst a person is using their computer. But one of the biggest appeals of Reading rulers is the fact that a great deal of material an individual needs to read is still printed. Reading rulers offer a solution to this. One that combines effectiveness with simplicity.

Haverhill optician helping dyslexic children

Posted on by Dyslexic.com

dyslexic-childrenAn optician in Haverhill is helping to raise awareness of dyslexia.

With Dyslexia Awareness Week taking placefrom November 3rd to 9th, an optician in Haverhill is partaking in a seven-day event to show support to those with the condition.

Wardale Williams optician practice on Camps Road will be providing locals with useful information and advice in a bid to raise awareness of dyslexia, the Haverhill Echo reports.

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the way people read and spell words. According to the NHS, one in every ten people in the UK have a certain degree of dyslexia.

This year, the awareness week theme is Dyslexia Matters, with a focus on encouraging and helping those who have the learning difficulty.

During the seven-day event, Wardale Williams will be offering patients a free coloured overlays assessment and showcasing the new intuitive colorimeter – both of which can determine the specific colour that will help dyslexic people to significantly improve their reading skills.

Joanna Williams, senior optometrist at Wardale Williams, said: “Many people with dyslexia find reading difficult because they experience peculiar visual symptoms when looking at a printed page – words may move, blur in and out of focus or run into each other.

“However, for some people with dyslexia these symptoms can be reduced by the use of carefully applied colour and are treated by using either coloured overlays on text, or by wearing specially tinted glasses.”

But despite colorimetry having the potential to enhance the reading skills, learning ability and future prospects of some dyslexic people, the method can be less beneficial for children.

When youngsters with dyslexia experience strange visual symptoms on a printed page, they often don’t complain because they believe that what they see is normal. Subsequently, this can lead to them performing poorly in school, which will affect their ability to progress.

Therefore, if you think your child may have dyslexia, it’s worth speaking to their school to arrange an assessment.
There are many ways schools and parents can support a dyslexic child, including using assistive technologies. For example, the Nessy Learning Programme is a digital software tool comprising a series of interactive games and activities designed to boost the reading and writing skills of children with learning difficulties.

(Credit image: Thinkstock)